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News (Media Awareness Project) - Bermuda: Coxall Defends Operation Clean Sweep
Title:Bermuda: Coxall Defends Operation Clean Sweep
Published On:2003-07-04
Source:Royal Gazette, The (Bermuda)
Fetched On:2008-01-20 02:22:56
COXALL DEFENDS OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP

FORMER Commissioner of Police Colin Coxall has defended the anti-drugs
operation he launched some six years ago in the face of criticism this
week from Labour & Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister.

Mr. Lister said Operation Clean Sweep had cost hundreds of thousands
of dollars and there had been little to show for it other than the
arrest of "street corner people".

But Mr. Coxall, who did not wish to be drawn into any war of words
with Mr. Lister, said Bermuda had received much expertise and manpower
free of charge from the US and the UK and the only extra cost to the
island was in some police overtime.

Operation Clean Sweep had succeeded in hauling more than 20 drug
dealers before the courts, said Mr. Coxall, and had it been allowed to
continue into its second and third phases, he believed the island's
drug situation could have been drastically improved. Mr. Coxall had
been brought to Bermuda by the Governor of the time, Lord Waddington,
a former British Home Secretary, who was concerned that Bermuda's
drugs problem was getting out of control.

Mr. Coxall, a former operational head of the narcotics division at
Scotland Yard and a chief constable, was asked to tackle the drugs
issue as well as to reorganise the Bermuda Police Service.

Operation Clean Sweep was brought to a halt by the former United
Bermuda Party administration in 1998.

Speaking from his home in England, Mr. Coxall said: "Following calls
from the community to do something about the huge drugs problem in
Bermuda, I devised a plan that was agreed by Lord Waddington.

"The plan involved bringing in Det. Supt. Paul Hall, from the New
Scotland Yard narcotics division, free of charge.

"Also with Lord Waddington's agreement, we brought in some 15
undercover officers from the US Drugs Enforcement Agency, totally free
of charge. They brought their own equipment, including cameras and
films.

"They filmed the drug gang leaders and following meetings with the
Chief Justice and the Attorney General, a large number of the drug
gang leaders were arrested and the drugs gangs were taken from the
streets."

Mr. Lister this week ruled out any repeat of a similar operation to
try to combat the island's burgeoning drugs problem.

"Once you back off from Operation Clean Sweep, you have to ask what it
really accomplished," Mr. Lister told The Royal Gazette. "Just about
everybody who went to court was a street corner drug pusher. Mr. Big
did not come out of that. It cost them a lot of money to get some very
small people."

But the initial aim of clearing dealers off the streets was achieved
and later phases would have involved prosecuting the owners of
premises where drug dealing took place and identifying supply lines of
drugs coming onto the island.

Drugs on the street market are not pure and by detailed chemical
analysis of the substances - providing a type of drug fingerprint
- - police can effectively identify their origin.

Mr. Coxall, who is currently working as an advisEr on
counter-terrorism strategy for the British Government, said: "The aim
of the first phase of the operation was to clear the drugs gangs from
the streets of Bermuda and it was successful. Unfortunately, the
operation went no further."
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